


sleepwalking

by uriquack (CantabileCross)



Category: NINE PERCENT (Band), 偶像练习生 | Idol Producer (TV)
Genre: Angst, dreaming!AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-07
Updated: 2018-04-07
Packaged: 2019-04-19 15:54:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14240703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CantabileCross/pseuds/uriquack
Summary: Ziyi and Xukun dream of each other all their lives, but they live in alternate realities in which the other person doesn’t exist.





	sleepwalking

The leaves are made of silver and they hang on upside-down trees that grow out of asphalt windows. There’s a boy who prefers the ceiling to the stars, pastes imaginary contours onto peeling asbestos and pretends he’s in heaven.

Xukun finds it foolish and beautiful.

Winter is born from a broken fever, invisible snow caught on yellow garlands and the boy kicks a pebble out of his shoe. The dawn light creeps over his shoulder in increments of silence, a miniature parody of rainfall.

“Good morning,” the boy whispers to nobody, and Xukun tucks the words beneath his tongue as if they’re his own.

Overhead, telephone pole wires tangle and untangle between the patterns of the wind. From the earth they are umbilical cords to the sky.

 

Ziyi sees in afterimages, a golden cage inscribed by the rungs of an ivory tower. Inside this cage a bird with clipped wings and a pretty face pecks at neon bars, but Ziyi has long since swallowed the key. Birds sing but this one doesn’t, this one speaks in epithets that taste bitter on Ziyi’s lips.

This bird perches between bleeding blackboard walls. It bobs its head at a classroom of faceless children, a paper report pleated between schoolboy fingers with its magic crayon letters smudged into illegibility, “My name is Cai Xukun,” it declares. “When I grow up, I’m gonna be great.”

 

It’s the mornings, probably, that are the worst. Xukun’s seven o’ clock reflection is a perforated portrait of uneven surfaces and spiral-bound corners. The daylight unravels into lilac foam, particles of dust that float across Xukun’s cheek.

It’s the mornings that creep into Xukun’s skull, searing the edges of his vision. The ache is psychosomatic but the flash blindness is all too real, an infinite gallery of snapshot silhouettes, photo negative cards made immortal in the mind of his mind. Some of the shapes have begun to blur from the basin between awakeness and slumber, but Xukun keeps the important ones where they can’t slip away.

There’s an angel with see-through wings and gangrene feet, arms wrapped where all the evening light runs together. His lungs are fasting so he breathes black water and exhales his soul. There’s a boy who laughs with his hand covering his mouth, wishbone fingers that pare away at the soreness in his throat. There’s a name. Xukun traces it into the crook of his wrist. Wang, prince of an empty realm, ruler without subjects. Zi, unborn son of a midnight land, trapped where time had locked him between inverted hours. Yi, foreigner in Xukun’s dreams. Visitor from a different world, a world Xukun will never be part of.

It’s the mornings that force Xukun’s eyes open when it’s easier to see with his eyes closed.

 

If only there were something on the other side of the window. If only this chair had human arms, if only there were hands against his back to propel him into kinetic motion.

Once upon a time, Ziyi dreamed of a bird that was going to be great. It drowns in the afternoon moonlight and douses itself in the balloon air of a dimly lit stage and a thousand, thousand chants of a name that didn’t belong. (‘Cai Xukun’ belonged on a crumpled kindergarten report, an ancient page among the bedtime stories that only Ziyi knew the words to.) So Ziyi chases it until he’s before camera lenses and flashing red lights, billboard letters and stylized font that assemble themselves into blue paint, 9/99 flavors of Nongfu Vitamin Spring Water.

But the bird moves fast, too fast for this world to keep up with. And Ziyi, Ziyi hangs in place, suspended halfway between the floor and the ceiling, glass strings tightening until his head is pulled apart from his body and the only thing that he sees on the screen is a mannequin with a rope around its neck.

Twelve episodes later, after the golden confetti is cleared, Ziyi looks at Chen Linong’s place at the highest seat in the hall and then his own at number six, and thinks there’s something missing.

 

What’s the point of being great when there’s no one to be great for, when there’s no one behind him after the curtain falls.

On a bridge at the end of an electric world, the city opens its mouth and lets the sea fall out. A boy swings his legs over the space between the support beam and the waves, flirting with the ocean spray. Xukun wonders what it would be like to press the crease of his palm against the arc of his back. And push. Watch his body fall, lighter than air. Maybe he’d fly away with paper wings. Maybe he’d break apart against the water, faster than the tide can catch him.

Maybe he’d disappear in a trick of the light, as if he’d never existed at all.

 


End file.
